Mars

NASA’s Opportunity rover is the longest surviving rover on Mars. On Saturday, February 17, it experienced its 5,000th dawn on a distant planet. It was only scheduled to see 90. But Opportunity's long journey st... Read This Article...

Penn State researchers have developed a method for breaking down human waste and turning it into a Nutella-like spread that might be consumed by astronauts.
Future astronauts may decide to eat their wast... Read This Article...

Spacecraft could put Mars within reach, according to CEO Elon Musk
The Falcon Heavy may be a remarkable rocket, particularly after its successful maiden launch on Tuesday, but SpaceX has something more impressive on the horizon: the BFR.
An artist's rende... Read This Article...

Astronauts in space suffer from persistently elevated body temperature, which can reach up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) when they exercise, a new study has found.
Canadian astronaut Chris ... Read This Article...

With its vast oceans and methane-filled rivers and lakes, Titan is a prime candidate for the search for extraterrestrial life. While our knowledge of Saturn’s largest moon grew tremendously thanks to the now-de... Read This Article...

Lots lost to space, but Mars’ rocks might have done something Earth’s didn’t.
Part of our fascination with cold-and-dry Mars is its warm-and-wet past. What was Mars like when it had liquid water? Did any life swim in it? And where did the water go?
Jon ... Read This Article...

Six people recently returned from an eight-month long isolation experiment to test human endurance for long-term space missions. Their “journey to Mars” involved being isolated below the summit of the world’s l... Read This Article...

Interplanetary corporate synergy at its finest
Always willing to up the stakes of an already difficult situation, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the first flight of his company’s Falcon Heavy rocket will be use... Read This Article...

LITTLETON, Colo. — NASA's next Mars lander just passed a big test ahead of its planned May 2018 launch.
The spacecraft, known as InSight (short for "Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport"), has just completed "thermal... Read This Article...

Developing a supply of oxygen on the Red Planet would help sustain a human colony on Mars — and generating it from plasma could be the answer.
The atmosphere of Mars is approximately 96 percent carbon dioxi... Read This Article...

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is making strides toward bringing its rock-boring drill back online.
On Oct. 17, Curiosity pressed its drill against a Martian rock for the first time since December 2016, as part... Read This Article...

A study suggests that past temperatures on Mars could have sometimes peaked just above freezing, allowing meltwater to carve out distinctive features.
An image of one of the many valley networks in the southern highlands of Mars. A new study suggests t... Read This Article...

You don't have to lie when talking to your kids about SpaceX's BFR Mars-colonization architecture.
Yes, BFR stands for "Big F---ing Rocket." But there's also a family-friendly variant of the acronym, and it'... Read This Article...

Methane under the surface of Mars could have warmed it up in intermittent bursts, which could help explain how Mars was warmer and wetter so long ago.
Methane under the surface of Mars could have warmed up t... Read This Article...

A new examination of old data suggests that there might be ice hiding in the Martian equator, even though scientists previously thought that the substance couldn't exist there.
New research into old data suggests that ice may hide around Mars' equator. Her... Read This Article...

People will soon be able to fly from city to city within minutes, rocket and car entrepreneur Elon Musk says.
Artwork: The BFR would assume the roles performed by current SpaceX vehicles
Elon Musk: "T... Read This Article...

This is what real suspended animation will look like.
Imagine a road trip that lasts six months—no pit stops, black night the whole way. That’s how long it would take you, and how monotonous it would be, to ... Read This Article...

The European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover will survey, drill, and take pictures of areas where ancient microbes may have lived.
The ExoMars rover, shown above in an artist's illustration, is expected to launch in 2020. |European Space Agency
Watch out, Ma... Read This Article...

WASHINGTON — NASA is studying a “lean” architecture for Mars sample return that could allow the agency to bring back Martian rocks as soon as the end of the 2020s.
The concept, discussed at an Aug. 28 meetin... Read This Article...

Imagine an interstellar probe where the spacecraft can pick its own orbit, take its own pictures, and send probes down to the surface of a far-away planet without human help. Or imagine a mission that hitch... Read This Article...

Taking inspiration from the work of Leonardo da Vinci, a new paper suggests focusing on how to look for trails, tracks, burrows, and other signs that could reflect the existence of alien life.
When the famous 15th-century inventor and scientist Leon... Read This Article...

But the search for life on the red planet isn't over yet.
Mars is not a very welcoming place. It’s cold, there’s hardly any atmosphere, and its bombarded with deep space radiation. Even the soil wants to k... Read This Article...

It was warm and wet right around the time life got its start on Earth.
In ancient times, Gale Crater rippled with the fresh, blue water of a large lake. Now it’s a 90-mile-wide hole in the red Martian surfac... Read This Article...

Research suggests that gravitational interactions forced Mars out of the asteroid belt and toward the sun about 120 million years after the birth of the solar system.
NASA
Mars and Earth have very different histories. A simple example: Earth is mostly c... Read This Article...

Here's what it would take to survive this particular doomsday prophecy
Stephen Hawking is making apocalyptic predictions again. The respected theoretical physicist warns that humanity needs to become a m... Read This Article...

Today, during a phone call with astronaut Peggy Whitson on the International Space Station, President Trump joked that he hoped NASA would land astronauts on Mars by the end of his first term in 2020.
Ob... Read This Article...

Nearly a half-century after humans voyaged to the moon, NASA and private U.S. companies are once again setting their sights beyond low Earth orbit
THE WOODLANDS, Texas—Should the U.S. send humans back to the moon in a 21st-century reboot of the cold war–era A... Read This Article...

Scientists have located an impact crater linked to powerful tsunamis that swept across part of ancient Mars.
Did early Mars have a vast northern ocean?SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
The team believe an asteroid... Read This Article...

How Effectively Can We Protect Astronauts From Cosmic Radiations On Mars?
On a day to day basis, we hardly care to realize that how the earth protects us from outer objects and space radiations. With the adven... Read This Article...

Not even space robots are immune to the effects of old age
Since August of 2012, NASA's Curiosity Rover has tooled around the red planet doing science for us Earthlings. Now, nearly five years and some 10 miles later, the robot is starting to experience the... Read This Article...

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — SpaceX has been working with NASA to identify potential landing sites on Mars for both its Red Dragon spacecraft and future human missions.
In a presentation at a symposium here March ... Read This Article...

When humans arrive at the Red Planet, their success and survival will require adapting to local conditions and making use of resources in ways that were not planned.
Colonizing Mars will be no easy feat. It ... Read This Article...

A look at the Mission’s fascinating numbers
$300 billion
Emirate Mars Mission is the anchor project of the UAE’s space industry. Space technology is an important pursuit for many countries around the world, as evidenced by the massive national programmes a... Read This Article...

Hello again. Last time out, we reminded ourselves of the increasing fascination the scientific community has with one of our closest neighbors – Mars. Plans are afoot to actually take us there. But what will th... Read This Article...

Researchers simulated conditions that occur when a piece of the planet is ejected into space, and their findings could alter assumptions about the water budget of Mars.
In a twist for Martian meteorite studi... Read This Article...

A little more than 40 years ago, Dubai was a tiny pearl-fishing village lined with dirt roads. Now it's the largest and most futuristic city in the world, the jewel of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). From manmade, palm tree-shaped archipelagos to jetpack-weari... Read This Article...

The mystery of how Mars could have once had water flowing on its surface has deepened — the Red Planet's early atmosphere likely possessed hundreds of times less carbon dioxide than needed to keep it warm enoug... Read This Article...

Rovers have limited time on Mars, so to optimize the science returns, geologists on Earth are devising new strategies for NASA's rover drivers to find the ripest areas of study.
The Curiosity rover at a san... Read This Article...

If true, it'll be the first mud confirmed by the rover.
NASA's four-year-old Curiosity rover spent 2016 discovering new clues to Mars' history, including veins potentially from evaporated lakes and mineral deposits suggesting the planet once had oxy... Read This Article...

Hello again. Last time out, we reminded ourselves of the awesome majesty that surrounds us each and every day – and night – come to that: stars.
Be it their size, their luminosity, or the simple fact that in c... Read This Article...

From a distance of about 127 million miles, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter looks back at our home world.
There have certainly been better pictures taken of Earth, but few rival the perspective offered by... Read This Article...

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has used its radar to reveal previously unknown structures hidden below the Red Planet's polar ice.
Like Earth, Mars possesses north and south polar ice caps. Unlike Earth, however, the Martian versions not only contain wa... Read This Article...

While it's always difficult to choose just one best landing site on Mars, NASA officials say they have made progress on picking a location for the Mars 2020 rover.
In August 2015, NASA reduced the next Red P... Read This Article...

The methane-detecting instrument aboard the ISRO MOM spacecraft has been re-purposed after NASA scientists uncovered a design flaw.
More than two years after its pioneering Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) reached... Read This Article...

The subsurface supply of ice covers an area bigger than the state of New Mexico and could be tapped by future Mars explorers for all their water needs.
Beyond Earth, Mars is the most habitable planet in the solar system — but that doesn't mean we can simply... Read This Article...

Landing humans on Mars would be a momentous event in human history. To live beyond Earth's biosphere is a dream to many, but establishing a sustainable presence on the Red Planet will require mastering its envi... Read This Article...

Matt Damon's experience taming the wilds of Mars in the The Martian are now available to all, thanks to the immersive magic of virtual reality.
The Fox Innovation Lab, along with RSA Films and The Virtual Re... Read This Article...

The European Space Agency and Roscosmos' ExoMars program is sending a series of spacecraft to Mars to find out if life ever existed on Mars. Besides looking to answer this scientific question, ExoMars will also test out possible technologies to return a sample... Read This Article...

Students have created prototypes of space habitation systems for astronauts on the "Journey to Mars." The prototypes were built by the university teams of NASA's eXploration Systems and Habitation (X-Hab) Acade... Read This Article...

In September, at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk revealed a grand plan to visit and, eventually, populate Mars.
The Q&A session after the e... Read This Article...

When an object traveling through space encounters a planet, what survives of that encounter usually leaves a mark. This is no less true for meteorites than it is for expensive, carefully calibrated robots. Launched toward Mars by the European Space Agency, the... Read This Article...

DARMSTADT, Germany — The European Space Agency on Oct. 19 successfully placed its Trace Gas Orbiter satellite into Mars orbit, where it will examine Mars’s atmosphere before changing orbit to become a data rela... Read This Article...

COVERAGE BEGINS AT 6AM EASTERN, BUT TUNE IN AT 10:40AM FOR THE "SIX MINUTES OF TERROR"
If all goes well, Europe will become the second group ever to land successfully on Mars. The European Space Agency's Sch... Read This Article...

Before Elon Musk walked on to the stage at the 67th annual International Astronautical Congress to declare exactly how humans are going to become an interplanetary species by colonising Mars, one piece of the gargantuan interplanetary jigsaw had to fall into p... Read This Article...

NOW LET'S SEE IF HE CAN MAKE IT REALITY
In Mexico yestreday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk outlined his company's plans to take humanity to Mars.
Speaking at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara... Read This Article...

Elon Musk wants to send humans to the red planet. But even our robotic presence there risks contaminating Mars with invasive microbes.
Twenty years ago, America celebrated its Independence Day by landing sev... Read This Article...

SpaceX has conducted its first firing test of its Raptor engine, the powerful propulsion system that the company aims to use to take humans to Mars. SpaceX boss Elon Musk tweeted pictures of the tests late last night, sharing one image that showed a steady str... Read This Article...

Earlier this summer, a busload of kids used virtual reality to take a ride on Mars. Now, a new exhibit (and HoloLens headsets) gives visitors a chance to get even closer to the Red Planet.
The much-anticipat... Read This Article...

The brave men and women living in a (mock) Martian base (in Utah), have met a (mock) brutal and fiery end. After an (actual) greenhouse fire sent flames soaring up 10 feet into the air, our (mock) astronauts ha... Read This Article...

China has given the world a first glimpse of its design for the space probe and rover it plans to use in its first mission to Mars.
It intends to launch its mission in mid-2020.
As part of the announcement in Beijing, the authorities also launched a public... Read This Article...

SpaceX appears to have taken a significant step forward with the development of a key component of its Mars mission architecture. According to multiple reports, during the Small Satellite Conference Tuesday in ... Read This Article...

Mars One: this non-profit organization wants to establish a colony on the Red Planet, beginning with flying 4 astronauts there by the year 2023. The organization wants to make a very big deal out of this, adver... Read This Article...

Scientists have come across tridymite, a fully unexpected mineral recently found on Mars which promises to explain how the planet evolved and gives hope to determine whether there was water on the Red Planet at some point.
“Analyzing data from an X-ra... Read This Article...

Mars has water. Not just ice and snow, but liquid, flowing water. It’s salty and scant, but water is one of the essential ingredients for life on Earth—and although the Red Planet certainly wouldn’t be a ... Read This Article...

NASA has signed a new agreement to work with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on space exploration. The agency has agreed to share everything from scientific data to telescopes and (potentially) spacecraft with t... Read This Article...

Go ahead and pencil in February 18, 2021 on your calendars, because that’s when NASA’s next Mars rover is due to land on the Martian surface.
A sketch of the Mars 2020 rover design. Image: NASA
The Mars 2020 rover is essentially a souped-up version of t... Read This Article...

How will humans live on Mars? Well, NASA's not really sure yet, but if you've got any ideas you can submit them now. The agency has just put out a call for proposals for "deep space habitation prototypes."
I... Read This Article...

Clay Wang brought his kids to the California Space Center a few years ago to show them the Space Shuttle. But as he looked up at Endeavour and pondered human space exploration, the pharmacologist wondered, "Wha... Read This Article...

The first phase of ExoMars, an uncrewed Mars mission from the European Space Agency (ESA), successfully launched today from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Lifting off on a Russian Proton-M rocket, the Mars-bound spacecraft has begun its 7 month, 300 million mile long j... Read This Article...

European Space Agency's long-awaited astrobiology project is set to take off
Could there be life on Mars? The red planet would not be an easy place to thrive, but perhaps somewhere below the surface, shelter... Read This Article...

NASA is close to deciding whether to spend an extra $150 million to send the InSight lander to Mars in 2018 or cancel the mission after an instrument problem made the spacecraft miss a launch opportunity this y... Read This Article...

WASHINGTON — NASA could make a decision within a week on the fate of a NASA Mars lander that is facing about $150 million in additional costs because of an instrument problem that caused it to miss its launch window this year.
In a presentation to a mee... Read This Article...

A new video released by the space agency discusses the possibility of speeding up our missions to other worlds by harnessing the power of lasers.
Ever since NASA announced plans to send a manned mission to M... Read This Article...

HoloLens creator Alex Kipman has shown off Microsoft's augmented reality technology at the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference.
Jeff Morris appeared on the TED stage and on Mars in holog... Read This Article...

ALIEN hunters are hoping that what they claim looks like a sarcophagus on the surface of Mars is the real deal and not just an extreme optical illusion.
Images of the figure-like object have appeared on several alien websites and UFO channels with claims it c... Read This Article...

For the first time in four years, a new class of astronauts is being hired at NASA. Unlike classes before it, someone from this group will likely walk on Mars.
As NASA advances, it must combat difficult challe... Read This Article...

NASA has put out the word — it's hiring the next generation of astronauts, the first new class in four years.
But what makes this class particularly unique is that one of them could eventually go to Mars.
Tra... Read This Article...

NASA will decide soon whether a Mars lander that was supposed to launch next month will ever get off the ground.
NASA announced in December that its InSight lander, which is designed to probe the interior structure of Mars, would not be ready to blast off i... Read This Article...

NASA can't afford to put humans on Mars while also pursuing missions to put astronauts back on the moon, according to a panel of experts who testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Spac... Read This Article...

At a special hearing today, members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology tore apart NASA's Journey to Mars initiative, claiming the program needs a much more defined plan and clear, achievab... Read This Article...

From red carpets to shopping malls to Parliament Hill, the ubiquitous “selfie” has become a nearly unavoidable facet to life on Earth.
NASA published this mosaic of 57 images snapped by the Curiosity Rover taken in late January. (NASA)
And now, thanks to th... Read This Article...

SpaceX's Mars ambitions have been no secret, but the company has never laid out a formalized plan. Instead, there have been hints, threads, Elon Musk tweets, and the other breadcrumbs that made it seem like som... Read This Article...

Scientists use drill designed for Red Planet's permafrost to discover 'cold and arid threshold' at which even primitive organisms cannot exist.
The chances of finding life on Mars are much less likely after e... Read This Article...

The new annual report from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), an external advisory group that makes safety recommendations for NASA, strongly questions whether the space agency can safely live up to its timetable for a Mars mission in the 2030s.
Way ... Read This Article...

David Bowie will live on in space, but his lyrics are present in physical form within our Solar System, too. These geological features are what NASA refers to as spiders, and they can be found on the surface of... Read This Article...

NASA had to postpone the launch of their next Mars rover mission - here's why.
There has been much talk of NASA’s plans to continue exploring Mars this year, but the space agency has made an announcement that... Read This Article...

A U.S. science satellite slated to launch to Mars in March has been grounded due to a leak in a key research instrument, NASA said on Tuesday, creating uncertainty about the future of a widely anticipated effort to study the interior of the planet.
The InSig... Read This Article...

In Ridley Scott's science fiction drama The Martian, Matt Damon's character plays a botanist who discovers how to grow potatoes on the Red Planet. Now, scientists are conducting an experiment that will bring th... Read This Article...

Scientists and engineers gathered together to figure out what would make a good Martian landing site and what hurdles they’ll have to overcome for a 2035 launch.
. . . and the mining equipment, the spacesuits,... Read This Article...

BLUE dust has been found within Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover 4WD droid, which has been exploring the planet for 40 months.
As it carried out sampling on “buckskin” rocks in the Mount Sharp area of the planet, the drill found a rare mineral and disturbed the... Read This Article...

It will eventually be the spacecraft that carries humans to an asteroid and even to Mars, but the first big test of Nasa's Orion space capsule will be to fly 43,000 miles beyond the Moon and back.
The spacecraf... Read This Article...

The Mars rover Curiosity has moved in for a closer look at giant sand dunes on the Red Planet — sending back fresh images of their dark, rippled surface along with a few partial selfies.
Curiosity's wheel tra... Read This Article...

The Red Planet could find itself wearing a stylish new accessory in tens of millions of years.
A ring like Saturn's will likely form from the shattered remains of Mars's moon Phobos when that moon breaks apart in about 20 to 40 million years, predict planetar... Read This Article...

NASA has donated two humanoid robots to two universities for use in research.
The principal investigators in both projects “will serve as critical partners in NASA’s upcoming Space Robotics Challenge“, accordi... Read This Article...

The next NASA Mars rover may include a helper drone. This morning, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab outside Los Angeles announced that it is considering adding a drone to the Mars 2020 rover.
According to Elizabeth L... Read This Article...

You saw the "thigh bone" on Mars. Your mouth watered over the possibility of an alien "jelly doughnut." You marveled at the mysterious woman in a dress. Now meet the ancient god of Mars, a rock on the Red Planet that looks a bit like a face straight out of an ... Read This Article...

The solar wind has made Mars a cold desert, and a tougher environment for would-be colonists. Alan Duffy explains the latest research.
Four billion years ago, Mars and Earth were like twins. Water flowed on th... Read This Article...

Mars and its moon Phobos are super close — physically, at least. Phobos is just 3,700 miles from the surface of Mars, over 60 times closer than we are to our own moon. But the emotional bond between Mars and Ph... Read This Article...

It’s hard to miss the groove marks that crisscross the moon Phobos.
But rather than scars from a past encounter with an asteroid or another space object, NASA scientists believe they reflect the structural failure – much like cracks in the foundation of your ... Read This Article...

An online UFO hunter claims he has found evidence of alien creatures or birds flying across the Martian sky over NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover. According to the UFO blogger, NASA doesn’t want the public to know t... Read This Article...

Popular Posts

About Astronaut.com

Astronaut.com is a resource for anyone interested in the latest space and scifi news. Explore interesting articles relating to space, astronomy, scifi and entertainment. We pride ourselves in offering quality articles on a variety of topics in this area, but we certainly would not be here without you!